


Rare and Beautiful

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A Discovery of Witches AU, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/M, Magic, Vampires, Witches, and a snarky Murphy, but also there's sexual frustration, there's dark and deep shit, vampire!bellamy, wanheda, witch!Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: Clarke Griffin's magic was taken from her when she was eight years old. But after reading a mystical manuscript twenty years later, it all comes rushing back. But where there is magic, there are monsters too.A story about agency, loss, freedom, and the most beautiful thing of them all: existence.Loosely based on A Discovery of Witches.*“Oh, and you forgot to mention one very important thing,” she whispers, casual.“And what would that be, Princess?”The nickname slips off his tongue so easily, and he can feel her heartbeat picking up the pace. Her laughter melts against him.“That you’d much rather have blood than coffee.”
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 224
Collections: Bellarke Bingo, Bellarke January Joy 2020





	Rare and Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliceInNeverNeverLand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInNeverNeverLand/gifts).



> This is a de-facto A Discovery of Witches AU, but I took liberties. God, I took so many liberties. 
> 
> This fic happened because of [@swainlake's beautiful gifset - How Rare and Beautiful It Is to Truly Exist.](https://swainlake.tumblr.com/post/186360859759/you-taught-me-the-courage-of-stars-before-you-left) It moved me to tears, and then moved me to words. Thank you, Sarah.

_Michigan, 1990_

When she was eight years old, Clarke Griffin found a bundle of bird bones on her porch. 

“Mom, it’s happening again!”

Beyond the confines of their porch, the sun was already seeping orange. The cornfields looked like they’d caught fire.

Little Clarke sank to her knees and inspected them immediately. The bones couldn’t have been bigger than a sparrow’s, and they seemed to be waiting for her.

At eight, Clarke didn’t know what magic was, but this felt like it.

"Does this mean I'm a witch?" she asked of her mother then, the nervous gaze on her mom's face seeping into the air, vibrating around Clarke at a frequency that made her ears ache.

Abby Griffin bit into her thumb and shook her head.

"No, honey. Magic will never send you bones. Not unless you ask for them."

*

_Oxford, 2012_

The sun slowly climbs over hill. The spires of the buildings, much older than the sleeping body in one of the apartments at Oxford, loom over courtyards. 

They’ve seen enough to know that the history is undoing itself.

Clarke Griffin sleeps fitfully. The soft bones of her arm connect with the night stand, scattering papers and dust across the room. There is a crack in the hardwood floor, one plank softly dislodged. Two hundred years ago, someone died here, and they did not go peacefully.

But Clarke Griffin does not know this.

She dreams of spiders.

And in less than twenty-four hours’ time, she will not be looking at the world with the same eyes. Shadows and ghosts of stories will catch the corner of her eye. Her gaze will no longer be of this world. 

Morning is not usually the witching hour, but for this one witch, the world will make an exception.

*

_Michigan, 1990_

He'd never seen a witch more powerful than Clarke Griffin, even when she was eight years old and idling on the porch, peering through the windows when she thought the adults couldn't see her.

 _Bellamy_ saw her.

He stepped out onto the Griffin's porch and Clarke beamed at him.

"Are you here to check if I'm a witch?"

Bellamy smiled at her, taking a seat on the floorboards that could've used a little more care.

"Not today, Clarke."

She squinted at him. "How do you know my name?"

"Everyone knows your name," he said, ruffling her hair. The child of the two most powerful witches of their time, there wasn't a magical being in the world that didn't keep their eyes open for news of her. 

Even at their Michigan estate, separated from the reality with acres of corn fields and warding charms, Bellamy could feel eyes on little Clarke.

"How about you show me where you found the bones?"

Clarke nodded, getting up and dragging him towards the other end of the porch. Corners, always bad. A witch could never protect her corners well enough.

"They were here."

Bellamy inspected the area. Found nothing. Of course, he never would. It was a strange kind of magic and even if he was a vampire, this primeval sort eluded him.

Blood magic was embedded in the roots of their world. 

It could appear and disappear as it pleased, leaving no trace. It’s what made it so dangerous.

It’s what made it so alluring.

"Did you see anything else?"

She frowned then, pursing her lips in a way that almost made him want to laugh. 

Eight and there she was, more intelligent than some people would be at eighty. He could see the wisdom in her eyes. 

There was no hiding it.

"The sun was red."

Bellamy blinked. "What do you mean?"

She took his hand and led him to the railing, pointing her little finger in the distance, to where the corn fields ended and horrors began. To the east, where wolves and monsters hovered in the shadows, waiting for the Griffins to slip up.

"It was red, Bellamy."

He blinked, staring at something only she could see. But he could feel it. 

He could feel it. And he never told her his name.

"It was not supposed to be red."

*

_Oxford, 2012_

“And so, the researchers of alchemy became tinged with precisely the lunacy they set out to disprove.”

The next time Bellamy sees her, Clarke Griffin is all wit and charm. The room, stuffy despite the early October chill, carries her voice across. She stands on the podium, casting a wry smile at everyone who had gathered to listen to her.

She is still wearing the ruby chain around her neck, he notices.

“That, after all, is the point. You can hardly understand something if you don’t dive into it headfirst.”

He can feel her heart picking up the pace. Somehow, in a room full of people, it’s her heartbeat that catches his interest. It was her name on the flyer that caught his interest, even before Octavia had turned to him with vacant eyes and mentioned anything.

Bellamy leans back in his chair to listen.

“Can you imagine it? All these men of faith and science, turning to texts they thought were heretical and wildly wrong, only to realize that they were falling in love with these outlandish ideas.”

After her lecture, he idles in the hallway, waiting for her to appear.

_She will find the Ashmole 782 tomorrow. You have to be there. She needs you._

“Doctor Griffin?”

Fixing her braid in the doorway, a heavy bag already slung over her shoulder, she looks up and meets his eye. 

For a second, Bellamy hopes she’ll recognize him, but there’s nothing. She just smiles openly, albeit a little confused.

“How can I help you?”

“My name is Bellamy Blake,” he says, offering a hand. She shakes it. Firm, rock-solid, a Griffin through and through. “I teach here, too. I was wondering if you had time to discuss your lecture over coffee.”

“Blake? You’re Doctor Blake?” she asks, realization dawning in her eyes. “A historian. I remember now.” 

Her smile widens, and for a second, there’s the little girl who stuck her fingers in the floorboards just to see what was under there. Who’d open up a coffin just to see what happens to bodies after a long time. Do they retain magic? Do they disappear?

Bellamy smiles back at her.

“My expertise is not in alchemy, but yes. I’ve read your work on early alchemists. It was… fascinating. So, what do you say? Would you like to have coffee with me?”

She nearly nods, but then she frowns and, mournfully, says, “I’m sorry. I really have to finish my manuscript. Would you take a raincheck?” 

“Of course.”

She’s nearly strode past him when she stops, her shoulder brushing his and knocking him to the side. 

Just a simple touch, enough to move him. 

“Oh, and you forgot to mention one very important thing,” she whispers, casual.

“And what would that be, Princess?”

The nickname slips off his tongue so easily, and he can feel her heartbeat picking up the pace. Her laughter melts against him.

“That you’d much rather have blood than coffee.”

When he turns to her, his heart sinking, Clarke Griffin’s eyes have changed. They’re grey like the calm before the storm. Sharp and steady, as she gazes into the darkest parts of him.

Then, a wry smile curves her mouth upwards. 

“You wanna know how I always recognize vampires?”

"Please, enlighten me.”

"You look like you've seen everything there is to see, and you can't be moved."

 _But_ you _moved me._

The words, which have lingered in the air between them and made something vital shift, evaporate. The day is as plain as can be, except for Octavia’s prophecy. Except for Clarke Griffin.

“Have a good day, Bellamy Blake.”

And just like that, she disappears, leaving him to wonder, and wonder, and wonder whether any of it was real.

*

_Michigan, 1990_

“She’s too powerful, Thelonious. She’s - God, she’s _eight_ , and she is already too powerful,” Abby Griffin says, cradling her head in her hands.

Next to her, Jake Griffin wraps his arms around her shoulders. His eyes never leave Bellamy’s.

“We’re going to spellbind her. If her true nature comes out…”

There will be chaos, destruction, unbecoming like nothing they had ever seen.

Bellamy looks out the screen door at the little girl prying the floorboards away, unearthing something golden and shiny beneath the wood. She flicks her fingers and it hovers above the ground for her viewing pleasure. 

“You shouldn’t do it. If her power is a part of her, we should all help her control it.”

Jaha bristles at that. “Blake, you have no idea what you’re talking about. There are forces of magic none of us can control. Not anymore.”

In the last century, everyone’s powers were waning. Except Clarke Griffin’s. Hers, like a black hole, like a treasure chest, found lingering magic in the world around them and used it to make her own brighter. It was not what she chose. 

It was what she was.

“There’s no other way,” Abby finally says. 

Two weeks later, she and Jake are found dead in Africa. 

All signs point to foul play. Thelonious Jaha simply says that it was an accident. 

When they hand over little Clarke to her aunts Anya and Indra, Bellamy knows that Jaha was too late. 

There is already a part of her buried now, a part of her so deeply hidden from view that it sings to him.

It is waiting.

And it will come back.

*

_Oxford, 2012_

Clarke is not a fan of using her magic.

Not after her parents, and certainly not after she’d tried once, only to meet with the absence where magic once stood. 

She was sixteen, rummaging around her aunts’ attic, and she found an old grimoire. 

She didn’t reach for the worst spell in the book by a long shot.

All she wanted was to talk to her parents again.

But no matter how hard she tried, there was no response. 

Sure, she could move cups of coffee. She could have the wind sweep the floor for her.

But when it came down to it, magic was not there to give her what she truly desired.

So if it did not want her, she wanted it even less.

Studying it from a scientific perspective brought some form of closure. When she read of alchemists, engulfed by their studies to the point where they were hardly anything more than skin and bone, ravaged by madness and desire and epiphany, she could sense what her parents and aunts must have felt.

The lifeline of the world, thrumming in their hands. Too precious to let go of.

And if she could not feel it through practice, she found her fix in her studies. 

She started focusing on the history of science and alchemy because it allowed her to understand how magic influenced the world, while giving her a degree of remove. 

But once she started looking, magic was everywhere. It had touched everything. 

But Clarke could never touch it.

So she took to books and lectures, PhDs, traded her alma mater for a guest tenure at Oxford University.

It felt right.

“What’s it going to be today, Doc?” Monty Green, one of the kindest librarians at the Bodleian library, greets her with a question.

These past few weeks, all she’d done was hold lectures and then hit the stacks. Open her laptop and cite her sources. Her book was slowly coming along, but it still felt off.

“Ashmole, de Tschudi, and… God, I don’t know. Paracelsus?”

Green laughs, but sends her order downstairs. 

She has her stack of books ripened by old age in her hands within a few minutes, free to navigate to the corner table where the light hit her just right. If she tried hard enough, she could almost imagine she was in Michigan again, orange sunlight melting into her skin.

Clarke closes her eyes and opens the first book in her stack. Ashmole 782.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

*

_Michigan, 1991_

Bellamy doesn't mean to keep an eye on her, but it happens.

He and Octavia are sitting in a rental car, just a few paces away from her aunts' house.

"Jaha wouldn't be happy with this," Octavia tells him, her combat boots on the dashboard. 

She keeps drumming her fingers against it, a restless creature. Bellamy imagines her deciding to just break away one day, never to be found.

But the Congregation made _her_ the vampire representative. Another responsibility chaining her to the ground. As if any of them wanted to have anything to do with the council governing the magical world. 

"And since when do _you_ care what Jaha thinks?"

Octavia grins at him. "Good point. So, going in or staying out?"

"Staying right here. Just… make sure she gets this." He fishes around his pocket, dropping a necklace with a searing red stone in his sister's palm.

Octavia's eyes widen.

"Why do you want to protect her so badly?"

_Because she is mine. Because she feels like she is my responsibility, just like you once were. Because I failed to protect her before._

The words don't come out but Octavia nods anyway.

"I'll give it to her."

*

_Oxford, 2012_

He's too late, and knows it immediately.

When he enters the Bodleian, he can see a commotion by the window. Researchers and students are piling around so thickly in desire to sate their curiosity that he has to push through to see.

Clarke Griffin is lying prone on the floor, peering at the world with unsteady eyes.

"Give her some air," he commands immediately, looking to Monty Green. "And get me a glass of sugar water, Monty."

Clarke just keeps looking at him. 

He scans her body for signs of visible damage, but there is nothing the people in this room could see. 

"Ashmole 782," she says, every breath requiring a labor. She tries to come closer to him, pull herself up on the wooden floor by her nails. She grits her teeth and Bellamy helps her, her body soft and warm when he helps her recline against him.

"You need to see, Bellamy." Her voice is rough, older, tortured. He tucks a stray curl behind her ear, only to find that it had gone completely white.

"You need to _see_."

She reaches for his hand, and he takes it. He's too weak to recoil. There is a scorch mark in the center of her palm and when he presses his skin against hers, she winces.

Then, she lets him in.

_The blanks between lines fill with chants and promises, beckoning her closer, if she’s willing to look._

_And she is, she’s soaking it in, this light she’s missed for so long, like every part of her is overflowing where it used to be empty._

_Clarke's breath hitches as she throws her head back, slams a hand against the book, realizing that this is not a regular book._

_Oh no, it never could be._

_This is a witch book._

_Every word that slips off the page nestles between her mind and soul, transforming from a strange language to a language she finds herself able to speak in moments, sentiments, emotions._

_The word for magic flows like a crystal river, the word for chaos burns burns burns under her skin and in her throat, lodges into her head and makes her close her eyes with the onslaught of everything._

_The lights dancing in the illuminated pages turn wicked. They grow bristles and claws and they can never have enough._

_"No!"_

_It hurts, burns bright and sharp and whenever she thinks the book will let up, it keeps going harder until she pushes herself out of her chair, her mind set alight, her body burning alive without a match to prove it._

_The world fades away and, with a swirl of colors she has never seen, starts again._

_After eons of knowledge and power, Clarke opens her eyes and meets the librarian's clear brown eye._

"You found it."

Clarke nods weakly. Her eyes flutter closed, steady breaths against his chest. His arms tighten around her.

In a split second, the ruby around her neck catches light. 

There is a shadowy crack in the center of it, the charm and his blood seeping out.

Clarke's voice is barely a whisper. "I remember it now."

*

_Michigan, 1991_

"If it happens, I will know?"

Murphy, across the table from him, nods. The witch sitting by his side is still studying Bellamy, her head gently crooked as if she could peer into him.

"The ruby is a powerful artifact, made to be used whichever way you please. It's your blood in it," Murphy explains, a smirk forming on his features. 

The demon representative to the Congregation, he may have traded his lockpicking tools and combat boots for sleek suits, but his demeanor remained unchanged.

"So yes, if her powers are unleashed, if the worst happens, you'll know." Murphy grimaces. "We'll all know."

Bellamy pockets the chain, nods.

"Thank you. Let's hope-"

The witch speaks then, her voice like sandpaper against the August heat.

"Her time will come. Soon. Listen to your sister, Bellamy Blake."

*

_Oxford, 2012_

He finds her a week later. 

The bridge across the river where students usually row, preparing for another competition, is now empty. Not a single soul wakes up this early - the sky still a bruised blue.

Clarke Griffin is sitting on the fence, her head thrown back and her legs dangling over the abyss.

_More than alive, she is more than alive, and with a second, hungrier heartbeat in her soul._

Bellamy can no longer feel her magic, but he watches her smile, how pleasantly her features shift to accommodate the change.

He'd felt how much she missed her magic. 

And even now, her smile widens as she separates from the stone, hovering above the bridge for just a second.

She lets out a cackle and Bellamy knows that there will be a price to pay for freedom. But seeing her happy is more than worth it.

*

She was eight years old when she woke up feeling _less._

Her mother made pancakes the same she did every morning. Her father kissed the top of her head, smelling like coffee and the wind.

But when Clarke reached into her heart, there was nothing. A piece of wilderness was missing.

It hurt when something tore it out of her. 

A witch was nothing without her magic. A witch without her magic was an empty promise, a heart cleaved open, a perpetual winter.

Now, thirty years old, she knows where it went. 

She knows because it is back again, sensing her godfather, Thelonious Jaha, approaching her in the library even before her eyes can see him.

"Clarke. You look good."

Does she? She feels _fuller_. 

Her skin had expanded to accommodate her. Her lungs are filling to the brim. In the mirror, in her soulbody, she feels more substantial.

"You want the book."

Jaha cocks his head. Years have not been kind to him. Much like the rest of the magical beings, he had felt his magic slowly slipping.

The shadows in the corner of the Bodleian stir, and a woman steps out.

"Clarke, this is Josephine. She helps me on the Congregation." Then, a smile. "And yes. I heard you found Ashmole 782."

"I can't give it to you."

His features soften, as if entertaining a child's whims. Like a scientist faced with an alchemist. She sees how much he's weakened.

Of course he needs the witch. She smells like _wild._

Unlike Jaha, she still knows magic.

"Clarke, magic is fading. That book is the only thing that can save us. It proves witches created every magical species, it shows how we can use their magic to strengthen our own. Don't you want that? Don't you want good for your people?"

The impulse of the covenant is strong. Same blood, they share the same witch blood. 

Clarke's hand rushes to her chest, holds on to the ruby with the blood that has kept her safe.

The covenant is strong, but acts weigh on loyalty.

"I can't help you."

"You can't," his voice goes cold, "or you won't? Maybe you'd like that vampire to have it?"

At that, Josephine steps out of the shadows. She seems a natural fit in the darkness. When she’s in the light, Clarke can almost see through her. 

"The Blakes are sewer rats," she says, her voice as sweet as a child's. Clarke wants to reach into her chest and understand the rot. "They dragged themselves out of the sewers in the Middle Ages, and they've been scurrying around the world ever since. Did you know Blake’s sister is the head of the Congregation? She likes capital punishments best.

"But then again, Bellamy raised her. She couldn't have taken after anyone but him. Vampires. They're leeches, Clarke. Feeding off the magic _we_ created."

Every word is like an offense. Because for every memory Clarke showed Bellamy, she could see his in turn.

She gave him everything, and so he gave her everything.

 _Hospice days. The struggling breaths, bodies and souls breaking._ _The girl’s hand in Bellamy’s, small, and her voice contorted with fear. “Why do we have to live here, Bell?” The hospice is no place for a child. Death should have no part in the beginning of someone’s life. “We’re not going to live here much longer, O,” he promises, a resolve strengthening in him. He steals for the first time that day. He kills for the first time the very next. Three days later, they are changed. His own desperation, like a monster that once used to be a bird, when he agrees to immortality just so Octavia wouldn't have to walk past the dying anymore. The girl’s stomach expands. It feels warm not to be hungry anymore._

"You took my parents. You are not taking anything that is mine anymore. Leave, Jaha. And take your witch with you."

The woman's demeanor shifts, an angry smile curling her mouth. 

"We will get the book, Clarke," Josephine warns. "One way or another."

*

After, she finds Bellamy's office by feeling alone.

She pounds on the door until he opens it, and then she finds herself speechless, her hand dropping uselessly to her side. 

Why did she come? 

Forgetting is easy when he smiles at her, a little confused. She knows more about him than she should, knows what it feels like to _be_ him. 

"I have something I need to show you."

His shoulders drop and he moves away, leaving her to enter his office. Teak and sandalwood, dark reds, it looks how the inside of him feels.

And because she cannot explain what she needs, Clarke drops her things to the floor and takes off her shirt.

Bellamy’s expression changes from confused to shocked to- 

Deadly serious, when she unhooks her bra and lets it fall to the floor. His gaze trails across her body, finally landing on the ink seared into her skin.

“May I?”

Clarke nods.

Bellamy’s fingers are cold when they first touch her skin, inspecting the markings carefully. For a second, she thinks he might recoil as if scalded, but there is nothing.

Instead, inspection with cold fingers turns into reverent admiration.

His palms glide across her ribcage, leaving goosebumps in their wake. For a vampire, they are not really cold at all. More fire than stone.

Then he looks up, eyes bright and calm.

"Was it there before you read the manuscript?"

Clarke shakes her head. "No. I found it this morning."

"Will you let me see?" he asks, almost desperate. "Please?"

She takes his hand in hers and nods. And for everything she shows him, he offers something in return.

It is alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange.

_For something to be gained, something must first be lost._

_And now, not even her bones are her own._

_First, she divines as she did as a child. She slips into the bathtub, under the water, just as she did when her mother wasn't looking. If she held her breath long enough, she could reach a point where there would be very little to her; just one struggling breath in her lungs._

_At that point, she could always see what would happen the very next day._

_It used to be a game._

_This time, she dives in and it's nothing but._

_Clarke waits for the moment. Her lungs slowly catch fire, burning for a breath. Her hands grasp the edges of the bathtub but she refuses to let go._

_When her vision darkens, all she can see is red. Violence. Chaos like nothing she'd ever seen._

_She launches herself out of the bathtub, heads straight for the canvas._

_Red. Violence. Chaos. She fights the canvas, bruising it with her brush, and when the brush breaks, she uses her hands_

_Red. Violence. Chaos. Her mother's voice drifts back to her and tells her not to be afraid. It wavers. Witches lie only when they have something important to protect_

_Red. Violence. Chaos._

_Finally, she collapses on top of the canvas, spent._

_The shapes look like a curse. And there she is, in the middle of it, carrying a crown of gold, directing the destruction._

_In the morning, she rises from the floor and comes to stand in front of the mirror._

_In the past ten years, her body turned sharper. She observes it now, how the lack of magic smoothed out any curves and left jutting bones in place. Now, paint is covering her hip bones, stretching across her stomach to land in a spiral on her left breast. Fuller, fuller, fuller._

_With magic, she has expanded. Body and soul enough to occupy space._

_So full of strange want._

_She traces the paint, smearing it even more, until her gaze stops at the skin between her breasts and she finds something strange._

_The paint there is thicker, and she prods it with her finger, uncovering darker lines she couldn’t have made._

_Not even_ she _could draw the alchemical child that well._

_A baby, holding vines in its pudgy hand, floating in a burning orange flask that has always signified hope in alchemy._

_Transformation._

_Ashmole 782 is no longer a book. It is Clarke._

Bellamy's eyes widen. Then, he offers the most precious thing he has.

_Octavia, growing despite it all. Octavia, with her wildfire heart and bravery where bones ought to be._

_Octavia, sitting in a tavern with her eyes glassed over. Bellamy with corpses all around him, and his human sister somewhere far away._

_He feels her heartbeat vanish, and then kickstart again._

_"She will be Wanheda, and she will be powerful. The queen of sun, the king of the darkness. The queen of sun, leaking magic into this world. She needs help. She needs freedom. The price is high. Never taken, God, no - no, her magic should never be taken."_

_His little sister, sagging in his arms. Waking up only to say, "Turn me, Bell. You are both going to need help. Turn me. It is time."_

_Years of bloodlust and war. Octavia stays frozen at seventeen, and he is given a few more good years. They travel, they make their riches. They fall in love with beautiful people and watch them grow older._

_Mainly, they wait._

_And when Octavia sees Clarke for the first time, she tightens her grip on Bellamy's hand._

_"It's her."_

Clarke looks at him now, and all she sees is a man.

Yes, a man who needs blood to survive. A man who has been around for much longer than Clarke's entire bloodline.

Still, she cradles his cheek in her hand and it's warm. A faint stubble grazing her skin when he nuzzles into her palm, closes his eyes.

He's just as alive as she is.

"So it's you," she says at last, placing a kiss to the top of his head. 

Everything in her goes quiet.

She remembers so much now, things she ought not to remember. A different time, the crops, the red sun, his kind eyes. He saw her. 

He saw her and he was kind.

Her aunts welcoming a woman into their home. Charcoal eyes, the same brazen smile she saw Bellamy carry around Oxford.

_"There is someone who cares very much for you, Clarke," Octavia explained, kneeling by the couch where Clarke was reading. "And he wanted you to have this."_

_The chain, lighting up in her hands like nothing she'd ever seen._

The chain, lightless. The second voice, a dark desire lying low in her stomach. Wanheda.

It terrifies her how good its promises sound.

"What do I do?" she asks at last, murmurs it into the cotton of his shirt. 

He's cradled between her hips, so close and searing hot that it feels like they could become one.

His eyes are dark when he looks up and meets her gaze.

"You learn how to wield it."

*

For all her faults, prophecies, and politics, Octavia launches into a hug when she spots Clarke.

"God, you've grown!" she says immediately, draping her lithe body around Clarke's. A perpetual seventeen year old with a sharp glint in her eye.

"I hope my brother hasn't bored you to death with his stories. Or," her teeth graze her lower lip, and she considers it, "you're a historian. I suppose you like that."

"I _do_ like that," Clarke replies through a laugh, breathes in the feel of Octavia. Wicked and lovely. "And it's nice to see you again. Are you coming with us to the country house?"

"Since Jaha's put bounty on your head, yeah."

The notion snaps Clarke back to reality. There's no doubt that Jaha already knows Ashmole 782 is in her. 

"O," Bellamy pleads. "Now is not the time."

Octavia rolls her eyes and links her arm through Clarke's, steering her towards Bellamy's car parked down the street. She talks about prophecies and plans, the Congregation, and the 90s.

A well, full of things to tell Clarke, now that she finally can.

Even with a threat looming over them, Clarke feels relieved. They all do. There are no more secrets between them. She knows Bellamy's kill count. She knows what Octavia had done when she became the head of the Congregation. And in turn, they know how much darkness Clarke holds.

It's been walking alongside her her entire life.

*

The country house days pass quickly.

Clarke wakes in the morning, and breakfast is served. Bellamy pretends as though everything is normal; asks about her book and her life in the States.

After lunch, they walk into the woods and practice magic.

In the evening, they take turns choosing records, Clarke often falling asleep by the fireplace with a glass of wine in her hand.

In a bubble, she can almost pretend nothing is happening. Bellamy smiles, and his friends pass through bringing updates when Octavia can't leave her post.

Clarke likes Raven best. 

She's worked with Bellamy for decades, a physicist and a vampire with a sharp tongue and sharper teeth. Clarke looks at her and she can almost imagine a different life where this is normal; the jokes between Raven and her, flowing together like they've known each other for eons, the tenderness in looks Bellamy sends her way when she's not paying attention. 

A life. It's a life.

But then Raven will mention Jaha or Clarke's parents, and the illusion will shatter like a house of cards.

"Obviously, spellbinding was the best choice," Raven reasons with them, her boots on the chair. She'd just returned from a hunt with Bellamy. They don't talk about it, but Clarke can sense the blood on them, the exquisite pleasure of being fed.

She, on the other hand, has cravings.

"Abby would've never done it otherwise. I mean, a child doesn't know how to control all that power. It was for the best."

Bellamy's jaw locks, and Clarke leans back in her chair. She just wants to be alone with him, just wants two seconds to revel in the feeling of her magic. It's war and power and lust and it makes her want to reach for him.

But Raven is still there and so Clarke swallows her hunger, nods.

"So reading the Ashmole removed the spell my mom put on me to bind my magic?"

Raven nods. "Yes, I believe so. How are your magic lessons coming along?"

At that, Clarke wants to groan. She avoids meeting Bellamy's eye as she says, "I take one step forward, and two steps back."

Raven shoots her a sympathetic look.

"It's a process."

It most certainly is, but that's not what the problem is. Bellamy is distracting her. 

He disappears between the trees, and she'd much rather follow along than use a spell to find him.

He asks her to cast a spell to find water nearby and all she hears is the trees rustling as he moves, the forest breathing around him, low and slow.

One day, Clarke's tired of his carefulness. Of her exhaustion whenever he hangs his head because she couldn't perform the spell. 

They're in the forest and he's about to take off when she starts running first.

"Clarke, that's a bad idea," he warns her, his resolve weakening. 

So she wants this. Sue her.

"I'm counting on it!"

She can sense him behind her in a second, the trees thickening as she runs, levitates, runs, and then flies, disappearing behind tree trunks and melting with the backdrop.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Bellamy pausing in the middle of the chase. He looks primal as he sniffs the air around him and smirks.

"You're close, aren't you, Princess?"

She's sure he would never harm her. He's been committed to protecting her ever since her parents failed to do so, and yet… The undertone of danger excites her.

Her heart quickens its pace and he appears in the blink of an eye.

It takes her a second to realize that he can't see her. 

Instead, a slow realization spreads across his face, and Bellamy smiles.

"Turning invisible? That's pretty damn good, Clarke."

She laughs and then she's there, both of them so impossibly close and pressed against the tree. Bellamy's body is still coursing with adrenaline, the predator instinct that makes him bare his fangs in a tantalizing smile.

"I told you I could handle myself."

He hums against her neck, one hand sliding into her hair. She can feel a tug in her belly, this impossible desire to consume and be consumed.

Then Bellamy snaps out of it and moves away, schooling his features into a neutral expression.

"I think we're done for today. What would you like for lunch?"

So while she knows Raven means well, Clarke still excuses herself and goes to take out her rage on dirty glasses.

She can hear them talk, and Raven even comes to say goodbye.

"I know it must be frustrating, but be patient."

Clarke nods. "Right. Thanks, Raven."

The physicist grins. "And I told Blake to pull his head out of his ass, if that's any consolation."

It startles a laugh out of her and Clarke reaches for Raven with her soapy hands, inhales the scent of her.

"You're my favorite."

"Of course. I'm awesome."

The only one who is less than polite around her is Murphy.

From what Clarke could gather, he's one of Bellamy's best not-friends. The demon representative on the Congregation.

He strides in like he owns the place with a catlike grace, narrows his eyes at Clarke, and finally, nods.

"I can see why. But what is your plan here, Blake?"

The muscle in Bellamy's jaw ticks. "I'm going to teach her how to do magic."

"How the fuck are _you_ going to teach her about magic, you undead fuck?"

Grouchily, Bellamy shoots back, "I've been around for centuries. I think I picked up a few things along the way."

With time, Clarke even starts liking Murphy. 

He's at the house often, a reprieve from her frustration. They often find the same side when talking to Bellamy, teaming up just to annoy him until he throws his hands up in the air and acknowledges defeat.

"My mom was human," Murphy tells her one day, casually. "She never wanted to have me. She just liked fucking around with demons. Sick, right?" he adds with a self-deprecating smile when he sees Clarke's eyes widen.

"When I was supposed to be elected for the Congregation, only Octavia and Bellamy supported me. Not even my damn kind-" he starts, quickly stopping himself and averting his gaze. "Anyway, if you think being a witch is shitty, just be glad you're not a half-blood."

One day, she grazes his hand in passing, and she's not quite sure what she's seeing. All she feels is a tangled knot oozing fury and grief.

How strong the feeling must be, to catch it in passing. 

Bellamy finds them on the living room floor hours later, drinking whiskey and talking. 

Unloved. For all his thorns, Murphy had grown as an unloved creature. A child of crossroads, his longing reflects hers.

"Did you know?" she asks Bellamy later, when the sun has set and it's just the two of them in a house too big. It's empty. All witch houses have ghosts. This one only has regrets.

They're finishing dinner so Clarke knows she has precious few seconds before Bellamy stretches and starts pretending he's tired. 

These days, he won't even talk to her unless they are doing something

Her question makes him pause with a fork above his plate, a bloody steak and even bloodier wine. He cocks an eyebrow at her. "Know what?"

"What happened to Murphy."

He shakes his head, swallows heavily. "No. I imagine you've seen a lot more."

"He deserved better, Bellamy."

It wasn't until she'd met and seen Murphy that she understood the full extent of the current magical world's _wrongness._

The fights, the fury, the abandonment.

It was falling to pieces.

No one was happy. No one was free. Everyone was alone, and it did not start when the magic started disappearing from the world.

But it may have left when the creatures turned cruel.

"He did." A beat and then, "Well, I'm -"

"Ready for bed?" Clarke asks, digging her nails into her palms. " _Knackered?"_ When she sees Bellamy's surprise, she laughs bitterly.

"Can't we have coffee just this once? Or are you _that_ averse to spending time with me?"

So he makes them coffee, and it doesn't escape Clarke how annoyed he is when he sets the cups down.

Bellamy takes his seat at the table and rips open one sugar packet with a sharp slide across his teeth. 

He pours it into his coffee, stirs counter-clockwise. Licks the spoon. 

"So, what is it that you would like to discuss, Princess?"

His eyes are heavy and her desire burns bright in her throat, it's the loudest thing in the room, and she is tired of playing with it.

She's tired of hiding it.

"I don't want to _discuss_ anything."

She gets up, rounds the table, and makes him rise with her willpower alone. 

"I want _you._ "

He reaches for her first and she knows this well, remembers the way he bites a kiss into her lips, hands suddenly all over and wild. One of them scatters all the plates from the table, and he pushes her against it, pressing his body so close that she can barely breathe.

 _Good,_ a voice in her says. _Good._

"This is what you want?" he asks, lips sliding down her jaw and planting deep kisses on her neck. He sounds feverish, she feels like her heart is in her throat. "You want me? How sure are you, Clarke?"

It's overpowering, the sensation of him bunching her skirt up, a hand sliding torturously slow up her thigh. He's drawing it out, he's playing into it, and she pushes back.

"I want you to stop ignoring me. I want you to stop being so damn _sanctimonious,"_ she bites back, pressing her lips against his and deepening the kiss instantly. His mouth is red hot, his tongue on hers making her clench her thighs. 

Her hand tangles into his curls, and she pushes him closer.

Beneath, his fingers trail up and up, until he's reached her hip bone, his warm palm covering her core entirely without touching.

"I'm sanctimonious?" he shoots back, smirking at her. "I've wanted to do this since I saw you at Oxford."

Then, he starts moving.

His fingers slide into her easily, almost obscene how ready she is for him, and he laughs at her - with her, her head pressed against his shoulder. Her moans don't sound like hers - she's never made a sound so pure, but he raises her head with his free hand and swallows them.

"I bet you'd taste heavenly."

She understands the danger there but she nods, begs, "Please, Bellamy. Please."

He slides between her knees so easily, almost a perfect fit. Kisses every thigh before resting his chin on her lower belly and looking at her with something so strong that she has to close her eyes.

She feels him first before she knows what's happening, her back arching off the table, reaching for his shoulder, for anything. 

Wherever she looks, there is pleasure, like nothing she'd ever seen, her belly turning into a pitcher, honey all over.

He laughs into her, eating her out like he's ravenous, climbing back up only when she can no longer move, when all she can do is lie there on his dining table and feel pleasure cresting and breaking over her.

"You should taste yourself, Clarke," he says, chin glistening with her desire, pupils blown wide. Slides a tongue across his lips, brings them in for a kiss. 

Shameless, she licks into it, the taste of him and her too much to bear, and pushing her over the edge again. 

The world turns into impossible softness, her body beyond muscles and bones. 

Bellamy holds her down as she pours and pours and, when there is nothing else left to do, radiates.

*

Bellamy stares in awe as her skin grows luminous. She catches light with every flutter of her eyes, a small wrinkle appearing between her brows as she chases pleasure when he enters her.

"I'm not human, Bellamy," she presses out, digging her nails into his back and making him let out a full-bellied laugh. "I'm not going to break."

Instead of giving her what she wants, he slows his movements to a hard and deep rhythm, making her open one eye and frown at him. 

Then he pushes in again and her body, so soft, so fragile, so warmblooded, cascades back, pulling him with her.

"Fuck, you look beautiful."

Head thrown back, heart going for a spiral, she smiles up at him, caught somewhere between pleasure and reality. 

"Thank you."

It's such a small thing, but the sight of her enjoying herself so much that she's _shining_ sends Bellamy over the edge.

Later, when he's carried her to the couch, laying her body across his, Clarke stirs.

"Don't think you are forgiven. You're still an asshole for teasing me for so long."

"Sure, Princess." He plants a kiss on the top of her head. "Whatever you say."

*

For a while, it seems like the world has stopped.

News of the Congregation stop coming, and Clarke starts sitting at the kitchen table cross-legged with her bowl of cereal levitating, Bellamy often finding her misusing his furniture for her feral instincts.

One afternoon, she turns his whole bedroom blue, laughs at him when he dares to ask why she did it.

"Because I like you."

And it's as simple as that. Clarke wants, and so Clarke does, transporting Bellamy instantly onto the bridge where Wanheda took over.

He should be helping her control her magic, but it's too endearing. 

Because she did not learn magic properly, Clarke has to weave her own magic out of the ordinary. Incantations do her no good; they leave a crease between her eyebrows, tint the air around her with frustration. 

But then he makes her laugh and all the candles in the room flick on. She’ll read a sad book, and he’ll feel rain coming down on his palms, the sky above them the brightest blue he’d ever seen.

He lets himself be talked into getting her off in the forest, her warm body pressed against the tree trunk, her teeth biting into his jugular.

She's ravenous sometimes, a part of her he cannot understand. But he delights in it, her odd way around her magic. She loves it, and he's always loved her.

Seeing Clarke enjoying herself is the purest thing he had ever seen.

Later, both of them buzz with bliss.

"Raven never explained what Wanheda really was. An umbrella term or an actual person?"

The question catches him off guard, nearly makes him spit out his coffee. Clarke just cocks her head at him, nothing but pure curiosity in her eyes.

"I think Octavia would explain it better," he retorts, forcing himself to shoot her a small smile. But as he moves to return the cup to the kitchen, Clarke's fingers wrap around his wrist.

He never wants to see this look in her eyes - disappointed, begging him to give her answers. 

"Bellamy, please."

So he takes a seat next to her on the couch. They slide into easy intimacy immediately; Clarke moves her legs into his lap, and he rubs invisible patterns into the sliver of skin above her socks.

"Octavia has always been prophetic. Even as a human. She knew some things almost instantly, even before they happened. Sometimes, she would just… blank out. She would tell a prophecy, looking nothing like herself, and then she would forget what happened.

"Before I turned her, she said something about Wanheda, a force of darkness like nothing we'd ever seen."

Clarke catches his fingers in the movement, squeezes only lightly. It nearly makes him laugh, how gentle she is with him, like she's forgotten that nothing she does will bruise him. 

"I saw that, remember? In your memory."

Bellamy nods. "Right. After, we had no idea what she meant. Somewhere around 1930, vampires started dying. Witches could no longer heal as well as they used to. Thousands fell on battlefields across Europe. The Congregation had no explanation for it. Some, however, thought the other side was at fault. And there was _always_ the other side.

"Until then, we coexisted. But by the time you were born, the world was in factions. When Jaha started presiding over the Congregation, we thought things would change. He was the one who noticed your powers, told your parents to spellbind you. Just to be safe."

Clarke blinks. "Did he know I was Wanheda?"

"A part of him, maybe. The other part was so hell-bent on protecting magic that he wouldn't risk a second thought. He wasn't a bad man, Clarke. But he was terrified, and fear makes people do bad things."

The corners of her mouth turn upwards into a rueful smile. "I felt it. I felt a difference when my parents spellbound me. There was something missing."

"You always saw monsters where they couldn't see anything. They loved you, but they feared you, too."

She had told him that the sun was red, that day in Michigan. She looked into the crops, knowing full well what hid there.

Things none of them could have seen.

"I still see it, you know?" she says, quiet, brushing his hand and gaining entry into his thoughts. No witch does it with so much ease. But no witch has ever been Clarke Griffin. "The monsters, the things that should not be. And we are not saved. None of us.

"What is meant to happen will, Bellamy. Jaha just postponed it."

He remembers the painting. The chaos. The destruction. Wanheda in Clarke's body. Wanheda as a part of what Clarke had always been.

It's on the tip of his tongue to say something, but then she just gets up and stretches, her top riding up to uncover a sliver of milky white skin, impossibly soft and human.

Her heart beats slower, and she reaches for him.

"I'm tired. Take me to bed, won't you?"

Ever the loyal man, he does.

The next morning, when he wakes in a bed cold of her, and with pounding on the door, he thinks she must have seen something.

She must have known.

"You need to leave, right now," Octavia tells him, pushing through with a careless shove of her shoulder. Her eyes are wild, wide, furious. "Where is Clarke?"

"I can't find her. She's not here."

He can't hear her heartbeat, sense her in the air. She's gone, and the thought of it sets every nerve on edge.

Octavia sniffs the air.

"Wrong. Fucking witches. Move."

He follows her to the edge of the estate, running until he's breathless. The closer they come to the old well and the ruins of a tower, the more he can sense it.

Crimson, wolfsbane, witchcraft.

By the time they arrive, it's almost too late. Octavia stops him, ducking behind a tree.

There is so much light in the ruins - Clarke's light - and he still can't sense _her._

"Quiet," Octavia warns, and another voice rises high. His sister grits her teeth the moment she recognizes it.

"It's for the best, Clarke. Come on, won't you give it up?"

Josephine.

"Don't make me break it out of you. Give me the book. Give me the magic. You'll live, I promise."

Bellamy's stomach drops and he rushes forward, straight into the clearing, uncaring. He can smell it now - blood.

There is so much blood.

"Here's your beloved vampire," Josephine coos. "Maybe he'll make you give it up."

"Don't you dare touch her!"

He makes it behind the wall, entering the ruins, and sees Josephine first.

Smiling at him, she steps back.

The mossy ground is covered with Clarke's blood. Her body is on the floor, small and crumpled and…

Broken.

She looks _broken._

He doesn't know what happens first. He moves towards her, and Josephine moves a way. For a second, he can almost touch Clarke, wrap his arms around her, tell her it'll be alright.

And then a barrier snaps into place and he is cast out of the circle.

Suddenly, a coven appears. Twelve witches, their hands grasped, and keeping him out.

Jaha is presiding over it.

"Thelonious, this isn't going to help. She doesn't know anything."

Jaha smiles at him, and when Bellamy moves to throw a punch, he's pushed farther back.

He and Octavia do their best. They snarl and bite and fight, but the witches remain connected. Bloody faces and bodies, but they stand.

Then he hears her scream, and he knows this is not something she'll survive.

"She's breaking the bind!" he screams at Thelonious, whose face remains neutral. "She's going to kill Clarke!"

"If she must."

Bellamy shoves at him again, but to no avail. Every muscle in him is burning with her screams, guttural, wretched, the sound of a witch whose magic is being wrestled from her.

Again.

"Bellamy," Octavia tries. The witches are sheltering them from view, but he can feel it.

The moment the bind is broken, there is no sound.

The ground trembles and he can feel it. A scream looses from his throat and he falls to the ground, something snapping him in two.

The bind breaks and he can feel it, Clarke's body drawing its last breaths, stilling. The world tipping on its axis. A thousand cuts to every bit of magic.

It cleaves him open.

The coven drop to their knees in front of him. Jaha stumbles and collapses, allowing Bellamy to see into the ruins.

A beat, and then there is no Clarke's heartbeat anymore. All he can hear is the second heartbeat, the one they've feared. Dark, and rising. 

Bellamy had killed, and he had spilled blood. He filled his stomach with it to sate his hunger.

But this heartbeat demands more.

It demands not blood, but soul.

Clarke's body raises, her and Josephine in a circle of the witch's own making. From the salt, fire spouts, and Bellamy can barely see Clarke's body rising slowly, first kneeling and then standing.

She raises her hand and Josephine freezes. She twists her fingers and Josephine cracks in two with a sickening groan.

Then, she opens her mouth to speak, her voice cursed, veins overflowing with ash and dusk and something that should have never been woken, and says:

"You were right."

She turns to Jaha and the force of her gaze makes him cower, makes Bellamy want to seek shelter. 

The body that used to be Clarke makes every stone unbury itself, every witch in the coven scratch at their eyes just so they would not have to see.

It has Clarke's face, and it sounds like her, but when it smiles, it demands life for her life.

"You _should_ be afraid of me."

Wanheda is unleashed with a dark witch wind. The world turns itself inside out, and pours into the ground beneath her feet. 

She cuts through the flames and casts Josephine aside, her body meeting the stone ruins with a dull thud.

Then she reaches for Thelonious.

Bellamy takes his cue, following after Octavia as she cuts through the witches, her knife first, her teeth second. 

They have the coven falling to the ground, weakened by Wanheda's rise, their teeth bloody, their magic cracked into pieces.

Octavia turns to him with lips dripping with witch blood and says, "Look."

Jaha has nearly made it to Clarke, or what used to be Clarke. 

But the way she fights now is not their mornings together, her easy frustration with him, the blessed look on her face as she savoured what little magic she has recovered. The beautiful delight of truly living.

Wanheda is Clarke's growth gone wrong. 

She stabs a hand at Jaha and it turns into a knife, twists his torso and sends blood splattering across the grass.

They forced her hand, took her choice away. And now that magic has twisted, turned into something that used to be pure.

It's monstrous.

And it is not Clarke that will suffer for it, but them.

"Here is your book," it says, peacefully calm. Bellamy meets her gaze, and there is no recognition. Only the doubling down of the magic that has Jaha by his throat. "Here it is, I am here."

Jaha rises, despite it all, and pushes back. 

"I can't let you take it to him."

Bellamy can see all the fallen witches glowing, Jaha channeling their remnant magic to fuel his own.

"Scavenging the dead?" it asks, an ancient voice that has seen it all unfold already. "How weak."

The witches' glow turns brighter, bright like the fire blazing all around them, scorching Bellamy's hands and melting his clothes on him. It turns red, and the witches rise.

The ground parts for specters coming to Wanheda's aid.

"I am the Commander of Death, Thelonious. You will always lose."

The ghosts close in on them, their dread enough to deplete Bellamy. They chant the song of the cursed and the forgotten, witches and vampires and demons. He cannot see their faces, but he can feel the weight of all they've left behind.

Focused on Thelonious, Wanheda does not see Josephine rise to her knees, every movement causing a sickening crunch. 

She points at Wanheda, but Bellamy is faster.

"Clarke, look out!"

Then, he moves. The witch is too fragile and he sinks his teeth into her neck. Her blood is poisoned.

Wanheda turns, a passing glint in her eye Clarke's, Clarke's enough to give him hope, but she's too slow.

The ghastly choir moans as Thelonious escapes their clutches, appearing by Josephine and then vanishing completely.

The dawn breaks.

_Have I not given my blood?_

_Have I not given my body?_

_Have I not given enough?_

Wanheda falls to her knees, the ghosts surrounding her form. Bellamy sees her choke under it, gasp under their weight.

"Bellamy, don't," Octavia tries, but he ignores her. The ghosts claw at him when he moves through their ranks, the Commander of Death's coven, but he makes it to her.

Her hands are cold and she opens her eyes when he takes her into his arms. There is not a lot of Clarke Griffin left in her anymore, but she is still worth saving.

"Bellamy Blake."

He blinks away the tears, the ghosts pawing at his back. One of them is his mother, and he knows how much she wants to spill the words over her lips, closed shut forevermore.

Wanheda coughs in his arms, and he lifts the weight of the world.

"You are kind. Thank you."

Octavia meets him outside the cursed circle, trying to help, but she cannot. Wanheda is too heavy to bear for anyone who isn't him.

Bellamy takes her home, and the ghosts follow.

*

He can hear the ghosts howling around her.

For nine days and nine nights, he lights candles and keeps the ghosts at bay. She may need them, but not now. 

On the tenth morning, Wanheda wakes and says: “We have to go.”

*

_Michigan, 1991_

"Can you break the curse?"

Murphy sputters on his whiskey. He wipes the amber liquid off his mouth with a sleeve, and then levels a glare at Bellamy.

"Sure, if you want to kill the witch."

"No one survives breaking the spellbinding curse," Octavia adds gently. "The best they can do is live and stay out of trouble."

"Trust me, Blake," Murphy continues, dropping his boots on his desk, "Whatever returns after the bind is broken would not be natural enough to deserve to live."

*

_Venice, 2012_

He can feel her absence.

Wanheda rides in the front seat, eyes fixed on the road, and minute by minute, Bellamy can feel Octavia slipping deeper.

"Red. Violence. Chaos."

Octavia's eyes turn into the back of her head, her form like static, blinking in and out of existence.

"Red sun. The Queen of Sun, magic taken. Never take her magic. The Queen of Red Sun. Red. Violence. Chaos. The Sun, It Was Not Supposed to Be Red. The Queen of Sun, make way for the Commander of Death."

Her prophecies keep coming, like something has plugged her in, and his sister keeps regurgitating his memories back at him, the thick liquid of them spilling over her lips.

"O, just a little while longer. Hold on."

Wanheda remains quiet.

"Magic will never send you bones," Octavia says, crackles. "Ask for them. The Queen of Red Sun. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost."

Her breath goes out audibly and Bellamy hits the brakes.

In the back seat, Octavia has lost consciousness. Bellamy shakes her, but she only curls into herself, nodding discordantly.

The prophecies stop.

"She will live."

The voice chills him to the bone. Wanheda is observing them with interest. Even the way she cocks her head reminds him of Clarke, but the woman he loved is not here anymore.

There is just Wanheda.

There will always be Wanheda.

"What about Clarke, huh?" Bellamy suddenly demands, rage rising. "What happens to her? Why are _you_ more deserving of life than her?"

Wanheda keeps looking at him, her face neutral.

"You're gonna be quiet now?" he shouts, punching the back of her seat in a fit of rage. "How the fuck _dare_ you. She didn't deserve this. She never asked for any of this."

Even as a kid, she had no choice.

But Wanheda doesn't speak, doesn't give him answers, just turns around and looks through the windshield, a flesh machine.

Bellamy starts driving again.

When they've nearly reached Venice, just miles out of Mestre, Wanheda says, "What is meant to happen, will."

And it's this, Clarke's words in a ghastly voice, that finally brings him to tears.

*

The Congregation has chosen the most opulent building in Venice, and the gilded doors part for them as soon as they arrive.

The beings are in shambles. Some fall to their knees as Wanheda passes. Others disappear.

What is left of the witches remains in the chamber. Even Jaha, eyes full of terror, seems frozen in place. Outside, the city of Venice is waking to a rainy morning.

In here, representatives filter in and Wanheda simply asks: 

"What are you prepared to give to find out the truth?"

Bellamy wants to laugh. What haven't they given already? Everyone in the chamber has nearly died just not to die.

Clarke is gone.

Octavia is hanging by a thread, hanging off her Congregation seat, held upright only by Bellamy's arm around her waist.

What haven't they given already?

To blank stares, Jaha seeming as if he is in a place beyond comprehension, Wanheda quotes the first law of equivalent exchange:

"To obtain, something of equal value must be lost."

Octavia understands first, her voice a rough whisper at Bellamy's ear: "Someone has to die for the truth to be given life."

Wanheda nods.

It's old magic, blood magic. A witch like Clarke, who has never been taught spells can only ever revert to the primeval roots.

It is the only language she has ever been allowed to understand.

"An end for a beginning," she says, and the chamber echoes with it. _An end for a beginning, an end-_

"I'll do it," Jaha says, barely being able to lift himself from his seat. He is less, now. 

Wanheda declines.

"Your magic is no longer enough."

Tired, Bellamy speaks up, "My sister is a representative, but I volunteer in her place. If you want a life, take mine."

He has lived long enough.

But Wanheda declines, a flash of blue as she speaks. The ghost of Clarke's smile, enough for grief to cleave him, to make him regret every memory, the world blue as she smiles below him, simple and uncomplicated. Happy.

"You are the last thing that belongs to me."

If he had a heart, it would stutter. But because he is cursed, he has to continue watching another tragedy unfold.

Murphy laughs sorrowfully, as if he always knew it would come to that.

"In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm the only one left, right?" He snickers, looking around the room. "You don't want the vampires. Josephine is almost dead, Jaha is as good as dead. Is it me that you'd accept?"

Always fucked, Murphy. Never enough, unless it was to throw him under the bus. The woman at his side, Emori, whispers something, but he shakes his head.

No, he would never give Emori.

Wanheda nods.

"John Murphy. You are an outcast, a child of the crossroads. Your life will do."

"Right," he clears his throat and gets up from his chair. He is the only one who hasn't fainted or acknowledged her changed presence when they arrived to the Congregation.

Now, he too behaves as if though everything is normal.

"All the shit this damn _cult_ has made me do, and somehow death is not the craziest demand," he says, speaking to no one in particular. He even grins at Wanheda, rolling his sleeves up.

"John," Emori beckons. Bellamy doesn't understand the look exchanged between them. Maybe it's how he and Clarke would've communicated, all the words having been said, if only they had enough time. 

Murphy nods and turns to Bellamy. "I'm really sorry, Blake." Then, to Wanheda, "How do we do this?"

There is no ceremony to it. 

Wanheda blinks, and his body crumbles to the floor. Her body follows, a neat folding of the limbs, a weight relieved.

For a second, no one moves.

Then Murphy gasps back to life. 

Emori cries out and rushes to him. 

"Tell us what you saw," Jaha commands, unmoved. As good as dead, Murphy was right. All there's left is a ghost of him.

Murphy glares at him, still panting and drawing in heavy breaths, his hand clutching Emori's.

"I saw hell, Jaha. I saw infinite nothingness."

"We were all made equal?"

Murphy all but growls at him. "You stupid fucker. We will all be made equal in _hell,_ unless we do something."

All Bellamy has eyes for is Clarke - Wanheda - next to him, her body still unmoving. 

She isn't waking up.

He can't hear a heartbeat, normal or cursed. Either one would be a hope, either one, and Bellamy launches out of his chair, ignores Murphy and Jaha and their barbs, idiotic, idiotic-

"She's not waking up."

He shakes her body, but there is nothing. It's empty. No curses, no magic. No heartbeat, and blood pooling still under her skin.

Just a body, its soul gone.

"I can't feel her magic," Jaha says, and Bellamy ignores it, shaking her.

Murphy crawls to him, takes her hand and looks at Bellamy, wrecked. "She wanted me because I was like her, like Clarke."

She looks peaceful and it terrifies him, how much he'd hoped, how much he still hopes.

"Does that mean she's not a witch anymore?" Bellamy demands, desperate. 

Jaha collapses into his chair and admits, “I don’t know.”

She can't be gone.

He won't allow it.

So Bellamy leans over her, slow. 

Her blood is so quiet.

"Bellamy, don't," Octavia warns him, but even his sister is too weak, everyone's magic drained by Wanheda.

But magic is not worth more than a single human life, with its small joys and profound sadness cleaving the soul in two. That is what is truly sacred.

Clarke's smile, how freely she laughed, the joyous cackle when she lit a candle for the first time, using only her fingertips. Her body warm against his. The moments they stole away, laughing and fighting and reclaiming something he'd long thought was lost for good. _That_ is what makes magic worth living for.

And Clarke… Her whole life, people have been taking things away from her. She was not given a childhood. Her magic was locked away.

What little she had left, she used to do good. 

He'll never forget her smile, blessed and uncomplicated.

Just happy to be there, in his shitty country house and reunited with her magic at last. Thinking it rare and beautiful to even exist.

Her whole life, they've been taking away from her.

It's about time someone gave her something in return.

"Bellamy, I don't think that's smart," Murphy tries, but it's too late.

Bellamy sinks his teeth into her neck, and the world goes quiet.

***

Raven wakes with an earthquake, and the ground doesn't stop trembling into the day. She runs errands with the windows shaking, and eats dinner with her lover as the glassware around them quivers.

"I think we should go on a vacation," Shaw says, wrapping his arms around her waist and placing a kiss on her bare shoulder.

"A vampire and a demon, vacationing where exactly?"

His eyes are full of mirth as he looks at her.

"Spain. That's where everyone is going these days."

*

John turns to the last page of the newspaper and lets out a loud exhale.

"John."

"Emori."

His partner raises an eyebrow at him. "Are you going to be a prick, or tell me what you're sighing about?"

They've come a long way since she found him in the gutter, robbed him blind, and returned to help out of the kindness of her heart.

But one thing will never change. Their barbed wire delight in one another.

"Have you seen the paper today?"

She shrugs casually, taking a seat in his lap and reaching for the discarded newspaper. John wraps his arms around her waist, inhales the smell of her.

God, he thought he lost her.

"A pool of black light appears in Siberia," Emori starts reading out loud, a quizzical smile curling her mouth upwards. "According to witnesses, the ground cracked three days ago. On Monday, at 1300 hours, Yelena Petrova witnessed the appearance of black light coming in through the cracks. _I thought it was oil_ , Petrova tells us. _When I touched it, it healed my broken arm._

"Seriously, John?"

"Keep reading."

Emori rolls her eyes.

" _I_ _t's magic,_ claims another resident of a neighbouring village. _We brought our sick, and the light healed them._ Scientists have refused to comment, while all over Siberia, believers and non-believers alike organize pilgrimages. _Even if it is magic, no one really cares,_ Petrova explains. _God knows we need a little more hope_."

"If you turn to page three, you'll see a very lucid account of a woman who says she only passed her finals because of a witch in her Maths class. And if you glance at page fifteen-"

"Alright, John. What's going on?"

He smiles at Emori.

"The mortals are waking up to the return of magic. And everyone thinks it's fantastic."

*

Octavia closes the chamber door after a long day. Every bone in her body hurts. She wants a tall glass of whiskey, and a month of sleep.

Outside, Venice is lit up by the sunshine. Everyone's forgotten all about the rain.

And the world, despite not knowing what happened on the floor Octavia is now crossing, woke up to hope.

"It's a lot of work, hope," she says, speaking into empty ether.

"Did you think we'd get out easy?"

She smiles at Murphy.

The Congregation is different now. She is almost glad to have the demon by her side.

"What happened in Siberia, Murphy?"

He shrugs, but flashes her a grin. That's what she likes about him. He's an asshole, but he's honest. He's got a good heart.

_Was that what Clarke saw in him?_

"She may have left me with some instructions."

They still don't mention her name, it's too raw. Bellamy still won't show his face in Venice.

The world is brighter, but at a high cost.

"How's your magic, Harper?" Murphy suddenly asks, turning to the witch sitting in a sunlit corner. Her eyes closed, she smiles lightly.

Octavia hasn't seen a witch sit so peacefully in a room with a demon and a vampire for… well, for centuries.

But Harper was a good fit. Harper came and knocked on the doors, demanding to be let in after Jaha disappeared.

She spent three nights outside, and her glow hadn't faded.

Octavia thought it was a sign.

"Better," Harper replies happily. "You did good, Murphy. Thank you."

"Hey, just taking one for the team."

This time, he doesn't sound unhappy about it. And they _are_ a team. Species coming together to build a future.

It's a shame it took a tragedy to get them there.

"So, what's next?"

Octavia looks inside. There is a prophecy or two still roiling there, but it doesn't matter. They're small prophecies anyway. 

The world is finally quiet, after a very long time.

*

Every witch house is a little haunted, Bellamy knows. 

By all accounts, the Griffin's house should be the most haunted one out of the lot.

But when he crosses the porch and lingers by the screen door, all he feels are the ghosts of happy memories. His, too, an easy smile with Clarke's hand in his.

"You'll catch a cold."

He turns around and meets her eye.

She looks fond, maybe even a little annoyed. But hungry. These days, it's all she is, and he is more than happy to feed her whatever she needs.

"I'm a vampire."

She takes his hand in his, searching for an invisible pulse. Leans her head on his shoulder, nuzzles into the spot between his shoulder and neck that she likes best.

"I still worry."

He squeezes her hand.

"I know."

He follows her inside, into the kitchen. There are still photos of her family on the walls and sometimes, he catches them humming.

Sometimes, he hears Jake Griffin say: _Thank you_.

"Mrs Green said hi," he tells her, taking a seat by the counter as she makes the coffee boil on the stove. It threatens to overflow but she keeps her gaze focused on him.

"Oh? And did she say we ought to get married before people realize we're living in sin? Again?"

Bellamy laughs, and rises to his feet. It's easy like this, watching his Clarke hum as she makes coffee. 

But it's his Clarke.

Just a little different, just a little _more._

Bellamy weaves an arm around her waist and kisses the nape of her neck. When she turns around to deepen the kiss, the coffee spoon continues its orbit around the mug.

"Next time, tell her we don't mind. We should all be lighter on our sins anyway."

With that, she takes his hand and leads him out to the porch. The morning is dewdrop quiet. Yesterday, a pool of black light appeared in Siberia. The world is still feeling the aftershocks.

But Clarke is recovering, and when she puts her feet in his lap, wrapping her fingers around her coffee cup, that's all that matters.

There's a heartbeat then, and she shakes her head.

"Too far."

A rabbit jumps out into the clearing, and Clarke smiles quizzically.

"I bet it would be delicious."

Bellamy kisses her cheek. "I bet it would."

Years ago, what feels like eons ago, they stood on this porch different. 

He was younger, and so was she. He looked at her and saw a child in need of protecting.

Now, he looks at her and he's not quite sure what he's seeing, but it's happy. Clarke is happy.

"So what am I now?"

Bellamy smiles and admits, "I don't know."

To that, she shakes her feet in his lap, like they are new, like she is a child and they are the most interesting thing in the world.

These days, everything seems new to her.

"Well, that's a first," she shoots back with a smirk. 

Then she gets up, stretches like a contented cat, and takes his hand.

No matter what, they've got each other. 

Now and, he suspects, forever. 

"Come on, lover. We've got our whole lives to live."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Again, I have to direct you to [Sarah @swainlake's gifset.](https://swainlake.tumblr.com/post/186360859759/you-taught-me-the-courage-of-stars-before-you-left) There is just something so damn heartbreaking about Clarke Griffin, hoping for very little, and cherishing everything.
> 
> You can also check out [the scenes that didn't make the cut here,](https://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com/post/190128592067) and [my web weaving edit](https://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com/post/616020362358046720) that shows the inspirations behind this fic.
> 
> In the end, I did my thing. I hope you liked it! :)


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